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RSS and Science Fiction: The Definitive Guide
There's a whole new universe opening up online for the SFF genre
using the Internet's new RSS technology. But what the heck is RSS,
how do you get it, and why should you care?
Doh, you say? Well RSS - which stands for really simple syndication - is the latest internet technology now being touted as the new best way to get content delivered to you (a) as it happens and (b) without all that awful spam cluttering up our e-mail in-boxes. After all, there's only so many offers to increase the size of your vital organs, get rich quick by sending money to a Nigeria's ex-Treasury Minister, and smoke herbal viagra a fellow can take in a day. Anyway ... just like the way you get e-mail, you'll either need some software on your PC, or an online service in the same vein as Hotmail, to read RSS-sent content. You can then subscribe to your choice of thousands of news feeds and have them aggregated on a single page - so no more checking site after site to stay current on the subjects, hobbies and news that interest you. Just open up your RSS reading software and voila, it's all there to read in one place. I'm currently using the free web-based Bloglines.com service to do this (think Hotmail for RSS). I was attracted by the fact it's run as a free online service. Which means no extra software consuming my already fragile supply of hard disk space, plus I can catch up on my reading in the local internet cafe when I'm travelling. In fact, you can subscribe to the SFcrowsnest's own daily news updates, directly via Bloglines, by clicking this link, and signing up for one of their free accounts: http://www.bloglines.com/ Once you've got your Bloglines account set up, here's some extra SF&F content to subscribe to: About.com's Hailing Frequencies Newsletter Xenite.org SFF News Sci-Fi Channel's Sci-Fi Wire Daily News Vanguard Report Daily Sci-Fi News Emerald City SFF Book Reviews Bloglines seems remarkably ad-free at the moment, although I suspect that might change as their popularity grows. If you would prefer to install the RSS software on your own PC, Mac or whatever, then there's a large list of applications over here. I have heard good things about an RSS-Microsoft Outlook plugin called NewsGator over at www.newsgator.com as well as stand-alone RSS software from www.headlineviewer.com and http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/ - but have no hands-on experience of using them myself. Of course, if RSS is old hat to you and I am preaching to the converted, the Nest's new daily content feed can be subscribed to directly using the URL http://www.sfcrowsnest.co.uk/fastnews/rss.php and your existing RSS software Once you're up and running with RSS, you can look up an even wider range of the RSS content available online, via the trusty 'Yahoo' of RSS, www.syndic8.com - everything from fly fishing to filk singing is listed on their directory pages. You truly are spoiled for choice, and my RSS channels now include PHP programming, FileMaker Pro database tips, share price feeds for my day trading hobby, books reviews from Amazon for their fiction charts, and more SFF goodies than you can shake a stick at. One warning though. Just like e-mail, once you've had a taste of RSS, you'll wonder how you ever managed to live without it. Enjoy, you science fiction and fantasy R(a)SS(cals). Stephen Hunt
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OTHER CONTENT - May 2004
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There's
a rather interesting new technology recently arrived on the Internet,
a little beastie called RSS, which promises to make our lives a
little easier.
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